Windows `whereis` Equivalent

Search for file patterns from the command line in Windows

whereis is useful on Unix. Windows offers where. An example of finding where Chrome is installed from command prompt:

where /R "C:\Program Files (x86)" chrome.exe

Below, run_where opens a shell and executes this command. One limitation I noticed with where is that a wildcard is not allowed for the starting directory. For instance, Chrome could be in "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)".

Created: 2020-06-16

import subprocess

def run_where(starting_dir, pattern, recursive=True):
    args = ['where']
    if recursive:
        args.append("/R")
    args.extend([starting_dir, pattern])
    with subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True) as p:
        result, _ = p.communicate()
    return result.decode().strip()

Python's glob module is much simpler to use. Let's compare timings:

%timeit -r 50 run_where(r"C:\Program Files (x86)", "chrome.exe")

1.4 s ± 300 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 50 runs, 1 loop each)

import glob
%timeit -r 50 glob.glob(r"C:\Program Files (x86)\**\chrome.exe", recursive=True)

1.38 s ± 303 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 50 runs, 1 loop each)

My Notes

Windows whereis Equivalent

Windows `whereis` Equivalent